


duty & honor

by Ashling



Series: i couldn't stop & i didn't want to [2]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-04 01:27:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15830919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: if it feels too good to be true, it probably is.





	duty & honor

"What's wrong with you?" Lizzie demands, before Grace has even the time to let go of the door handle. 

Any other day, and Grace would come right back at her with,  _how did you find my flat?_ but today is not the day. Besides, Polly has repeat tactics so Grace can pretty much guess.

"I had some family business to attend to," she says, which again is not a lie. Always helps to go mixing the truth and lies, as long as you can keep them straight. Grace has always been good at seeing the whole board, and every tiny interlocking piece on it, keeping it sorted, but here's Lizzie, in front of her, and Grace is so far gone she can't even remember what move she was supposed to play, much less which piece Lizzie is. You get a pawn to the end of the board and she's a queen. She's a queen and Grace is a wreck. She shouldn't be, and yet.

Lizzie gets into Grace's flat with a look and a half-slide in through the door; the look knocks Grace back a step, and then Lizzie's in, purse in hand, looking around unabashedly at the place.

"I see you've fully recovered," Grace mutters. It's something in the way Lizzie carries herself, a confidence that wasn't even there before Lizzie was sick. Aplomb, Grace would call it, but Lizzie would probably laugh at that and Grace is trying to be more ha ha funny than ha ha ridiculous now. (It's a course correction that comes way too late, but you know what? She's doing her best.)

"I see you have the aesthetic sensibilities of a 1890s bachelor crossed with a sad nun," says Lizzie. "You live like this?"

"I don't know, do you still have a massive pile of laundry hidden in a secret room covered in doodles?"

"I was dying. People are allowed to do anything they like when they're dying."

"You weren't dying, don't be so dramatic."

"I was, and you saved me, so you'd better at least let me buy you a pair of matching drapes." Lizzie is touching one of said drapes, studying its undeniably old-fashioned floral pattern with an expression of mingled amazement and disgust.

"Oh, you're going to save me now, is that it?" Grace murmurs.

"Yes," Lizzie says, with a tilt of her chin and a flash of a smile, and oh no. Oh no.

 

 

Once Lizzie has denigrated Grace's place to her satisfaction (the cupboard contents-inadequate! the wardrobe-paltry! the décor-nonexistent!), the kettle finally screeches and Grace restores the peace for one blissful minute by pouring out a couple cups of tea. Lizzie's done with the game, Grace can tell, because the teacups don't match and they're both chipped, but Lizzie doesn't mention it.

"Are you gonna explain yourself now?" Lizzie says instead.

"I don't spend a lot of time here," Grace says, which is true, but.

"That's not what I meant. We can return to the state of your flat in a minute."

"Oh, good."

Lizzie puts her elbows on the table and leans forward a little. "You can't just disappear on me, Grace." Her voice says: playtime is over. Her voice says: no more lies. But if there's anything Grace is good at, it's clinging to her cover even when everything else has gone to shit.

"I didn't disappear. I told you where I was. And you saw me half the time."

"Yeah, I saw you hunched over your desk, writing like there was no tomorrow."

"If there was no tomorrow, I wouldn't spend the day writing."

"What would you do, then?"

Lizzie has finished her cup of tea and is busying herself eating a cube of sugar right out of the jar. She raises one perfect eyebrow in challenge. For a moment, Grace can't think.

"Buy some drapes?"

That gets her only a smile where usually she'd get a laugh. Lizzie is usually so generous with her, another thing Grace isn't used to. But she can tell Lizzie is zeroing in on the question, so she braces herself.

"How are you, really?"

"I'm fine."

"Fine and alright. That's what you always say. One or the other, for six days straight. You can tell me what happened, you know."

"It's personal," Grace says, which sounds good but isn't true.

"Personal." Lizzie huffs. "You gave me a bath, which I then threw up into, and then gave me a second bath after that. We've been personal."

"It's not like that. It's not just about me." Grace says it calmly, weaving truth and fiction together like it's art. In her hands, it is. "I don't want to expose you to anything that could make you uncomfortable, or worse, put you in harm's way. You've only worked for the Peakys for a little while, but you know about having deniability. It's like that."

She started off so calm, but she can feel the heat rising in her words, so she falls back squarely on the things she should have led with, the core of it all. Or at least what ought to be the core of it all. "

"Also," she says, "there are other people involved. People that depend on me. I gave them my word, and I don't intend to break it, even if that means I can't—have the friendships that I want."

Lizzie's pale green eyes have gone grey in this light and Grace can't make her out for shit, which should be worrying, because _that's her entire profession,_ but then Lizzie leans back in her chair with a faint smile and all other thought goes out of Grace's head.

"Goddammit," Lizzie says ruefully.

"What?" Grace can feel the nervousness escaping herself in little wisps, can hear it in her own voice.

Lizzie opens her mouth to say something, smiles fully, shakes her head. "You know, men always like to talk," she says, finally. "They think they don't, but they fucking love to hear the sound of their own voices. Especially after they've fucked, if they don't fall asleep first. And I've fucked a lot of soldiers in my time, so I've heard a lot of that stuff before, but you know what? You're the first person I've heard that could make that duty and honor shit sound _good_."

Whatever Grace expected from Lizzie, it wasn't that. "I don't know what to say."

"I mean it. If they'd toured you around Small Heath in 1914 to give those recruitment speeches, I'd have enlisted as an ambulance driver. Or anything you asked."

Grace can't help herself. There's all the schoolgirl nonsense of Lizzie's soft hair and clear eyes, and then there's the fact that Lizzie's getting closer to knowing her than anyone else has in a long time, and somehow, Lizzie's managing to like her more instead of less for it. It's a lot to suppress. And she can't. Grace smiles, tries to keep the smile small. "Thank you."

Lizzie smiles back. 

For a little while, the silence feels good, and Grace sips the remains of her tea very slowly to stretch it out. Then Lizzie gets up abruptly, with a bright, "Well, come on," and Grace follows. 

"Where are we going?"

"You won't talk to me about your private business, and Peaky business right now is either too boring or too terrifying to stand, but for our one day off, I am absolutely not sitting in your awful flat, drinking weak tea."

"It's good tea!"

"It's tasty, but it's weak, Grace. I'm adding more tea to the shopping list."

"I didn't know we had one."

"We're about to. With drapes at the top of the list."

 

 

Shopping with Lizzie is fun. She knows where all the bargain spots were, and some of the shopkeepers talk to her by name. Some of them avoid her, specifically, but after one woman casts Lizzie the most egregiously dirty look yet, Lizzie stops Grace before Grace can go after her in any kind of way.

"It's fine," Lizzie says, "it's more than it looks like."

"More how?" says Grace, privately thinking what fun it would be to fling a fistful of mud in the woman's face. That used to be her primary defense mechanism, back when things were simpler.

"She's jealous. Do you like this one?" Lizzie holds up a bolt of blue fabric, and Grace makes a face in reply. 

"Too expensive," she says for the umpteenth time. 

With a huff of disapproval, Lizzie relinquishes the cloth. "Well, no wonder your flat's so ugly. I think I've found your one flaw: you're a penny-pincher."

Grace turns away slightly to look through a rack of floral prints. She stifles a smile at the thought that  _that_ is her one flaw. As if she only has one flaw. "What do you mean by jealous? Her husband's a customer?"

"Not my customer, but a customer, yeah. That's a nice way to put it, thanks. You could have asked if I fucked him."

"It didn't seem the right words for a shop."

"Well. Anyways, most wives know if their husbands are customers, but they don't know which women their husbands visit, so they tend to hate us as a group. It's tragic, actually. You spend all that time trying to get the ring, and then it turns out to be a bad bargain."

"Do you think if there were men you could pay to sleep with, things would be different?"

"I don't know. I don't even know what that would look like. But right now, the whole thing is a tragedy. Oh, Grace, look." 

Before Grace can ask,  _what's the tragedy?_ Lizzie holds up a bolt of lavender. 

"Stand right there," Lizzie says, and holds up a corner of the cloth to Grace's face.

"Why?" But Grace does as she's told.

"Yeah," Lizzie says, satisfied. "Yeah, alright, we're taking this one. Come on."

"Too expensive," Grace protests, but Lizzie has already begun walking. 

"I'm buying, so shut up."

"No, you're not. How much is it?" Damn, with those long legs, Lizzie can really put on speed. Grace struggles to keep up without jogging or looking stupid or both.

"I don't know," Lizzie says, without breaking stride, "how much was that fancy London doctor and all the little pills?"

"Not much, he gave a discount," says Grace, but not as lightly as she would like. She wonders if she can get away with lying to Campbell about the ring being stolen. Probably, right?

"More expensive than this, anyways. _And_ I'm getting you a mirror."

"No—"

"Yes." The shopkeeper has finished cutting out the cloth they need, and Lizzie hands over the requisite cash with the air of a woman who will not be deterred. You would think she's a duchess, the way she says, "Come along, Grace. We've still got two more shops to visit."

 

 

They drop the bags off at Grace's flat, and then it's over to the Garrison. At this point, Grace has given up entirely on trying to either understand or control their day off. Personally, she'll file it under a much-needed break; professionally, she'll file it under gaining subject's trust. As if she hasn't done that completely already.

Things are in full swing by the time they get there; some poor sod is already snoozing with his head on the bar, John’s holding forth on some war story in the middle of the room, and Arthur’s got a brunette on his knee that’s got to be ten years younger than he is. But the minute that Grace opens the door, he lights up and waves her over.

As they make their way through the crowd, Lizzie onto her hand, presumably so they don’t get separated. Grace’s cheeks warm up, presumably because of the press of bodies around them.

“Twice the fun!” Arthur crows, upon seeing Lizzie’s there too, and Grace starts to worry, but his next words put all her fears to rest. “Best fuckin’ Peakys we have, right here, Ella. Isn’t that right, Grace? Don’t let on to Polly, but the numbers would all be fucked to hell without you. _Have_ a drink.”

Grace looks at him. Underneath all the drink, there’s a real affection there that reminds her of childhood cousins, stealing pies out the icebox, sleeping under trees in the afternoon, young trust. Yeah, she’s gonna need a drink.

By the time she comes back with two beers, Arthur has disappeared, probably intent on desecrating some back room with Ella, and Lizzie has secured them seats near the end of the bar.

“Wait,” Lizzie says, before Grace can drink.

“What?”

“Give us a toast, Irish girl.”

Grace chooses one at random. “Here’s to a sweetheart, a bottle, and a friend. The first beautiful, the second full, the last ever faithful.” On second thought, that’s not the safest toast to choose, but Lizzie doesn’t seem to have noticed; she lifts the glass to her lips and drinks, and drinks, and drinks.

Grace, after her own perfunctory sip, raises an eyebrow.

Lizzie points at her. “Haven’t been drunk for more than a month. Maybe two. Don’t you dare begrudge me this, Grace Burgess.”

Grace raises her hands like a gun’s being pointed at her. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good!” Lizzie tips her head back and drains the rest of the cup. Grace can’t help but notice that she does have a long, pale neck, that there’s something about the way her throat moves when she swallows. Lizzie catches her watching, and instead of objecting, she just raises an eyebrow and said expectantly, “Well?”

A challenge is a challenge. It’s been a few years since Grace last had cause to drink without stopping for breath, but she finishes her glass gamely, meets Lizzie’s eyes, and smiles. Feels strange to be smiling like this, teeth and all, but Lizzie’s delighted, and then there’s two more beers for them, and then two more, and pretty soon Grace is trying not to trip in her heels on the cobbles of the street, trying to hit a high B too, in a warbling rendition of a ballad that has Lizzie laughing.

“Wait,” Grace says, when they’re crowded into the narrow entryway, fumbling with to get their heels off, toes cramped and aching. She grabs the lapel of Lizzie’s coat to steady herself. “I thought we were going to my flat.”

“No, yours is still awful.”

“I can’t sleep in an ugly flat?”

“No.” Suddenly, Lizzie’s shoes are off and she’s leaning down over Grace, red lipstick somehow smudged at the corner of her mouth, smile sloppy, eyes warm. “You really can’t.”

Grace bunches her other hand in Lizzie’s coat. There’s a move for this, when someone tall is crowding her against the wall, when she’s got your hands in their coat. It’s a decent flip over the shoulder, followed by a backwards stomp onto the neck, but somewhere along the way, Lizzie’s flat has become the one place in Birmingham that feels safe enough to be home. So there’s another maneuver for that. Grace takes a step, twists, and pins Lizzie against the door. Grace wishes she had kept on her heels, rises to her tiptoes, tentative, but Lizzie’s got the idea and she’s drunker than Grace is or maybe she’s wanted it all night too. Lizzie swoops down and clutches at Grace’s hips and oh, oh, oh. It’s so much. Grace closes her eyes while they kiss, as if that’s going to help. Instead, it just makes it all so much sharper: the way she feels, the way she tastes. Grace shoves her up against the door as if that’s going to get the situation under control but it just makes it worse because Lizzie makes a needy noise into her mouth and _squirms_ and that’s it, Grace knows how the night is going to end.

 

 

 

They shed coats as they make their way across the floor. When Lizzie bumps up against the footboard of the bed, she breaks away from Grace with an audible gasp in for air, tears off her dress and underclothes with a speed that leaves Grace impressed and staring. And staring. And--

Lizzie laughs, enjoying all the attention. “Here,” and her fingers are deft on Grace’s buttons, her bra, the clasps of her garter belt. When she’s peeled the last of Grace’s stockings away, she leans her head against Grace’s knee, tilts her head up. “Hm?”

What a question. What a sight. But Grace has other plans. She hooks a finger under Lizzie’s chin and nudged her upwards. “Ladies first.”

“Lucky you,” says Lizzie. “I don’t qualify.”

“Yes, you do.”

Grace offers her hand, and Lizzie takes it. Grace leads her to the bed, lays her down, kneels between her legs.

She presses three kisses to the inside of Lizzie’s thigh, each slower than the last. Then she cocks her head, raises one eyebrow. “Do you--”

Lizzie groans. “If you don’t--”

The taste of her is not quite sour, something Grace can’t easily place, but it’s not the taste she’s interested in. She revels in the way that Lizzie’s breath catches, the way she cants her hips so she can follow Grace’s mouth, the way that she clutches at Grace’s hair. After a while, Grace’s tongue has all but gone numb, but it’s well-worth the soft sounds Lizzie keeps making. She touches herself as she eats Lizzie out, but it feels like she’s getting off on those sounds more than she’s getting off on her own hand. With her other hand splayed across Lizzie’s stomach, Grace can feel her trembling when she comes, and despite the beer and the smeared lipstick and the clothing discarded on the floor, there’s something so delicate about that. Well after her work is done, Grace keeps licking long lazy stripes along Lizzie’s cunt just to feel her clench and shiver. It’s a good five, maybe ten minutes before her darker thoughts come prowling back in, trying to convert how good she feels into something else. Into protectiveness, into _I’ll kill you if you hurt her._ Into violence, the only thing she’s deeply, inherently good at.

Though there’s something about Lizzie’s fingertips, that refuses to be anything but gentle, refuses to make Grace feel anything but gentle in return.

She doesn’t know whether this is something she should be grateful for, or something she should be scared of. Probably both.

  
  


Turns out Grace doesn’t know how the night is going to end after all. After they’re completely done, Lizzie takes a long bath alone, and Grace is fully prepared to deal with some kind of backlash, but instead Lizzie slides into bed and offers Grace a cigarette.

“All good?” Lizzie says.

Grace nods a yes, then blows a ring of smoke just for the hell of it.

“Are we seeing each other now?”

“Looks like.” Grace has never been a big talker, and she’s even more laconic than usual now. She can feel Lizzie’s eyes on her. She looks down.

“I’m never gonna know you, am I,” Lizzie says. From anyone else, that would be an accusation; from her, it’s just an observation.

Grace shrugs. She wants to soften the admission, but she’s scared that anything she does will dilute the message, or confuse it, and this is something they both need to be clear on. It’s something Grace needs to be clear on. There’s some part of her that still protests, some part of her that says that surely Lizzie knows everything important there is to know about Grace, but she knows better than that. If her secrets weren’t important, she wouldn’t bother guarding them so closely.

“That’s all right,” Lizzie says, stubbing her cigarette in an ashtray by the bed. She cuddles down into the blankets, then closes her eyes. “We’re all right.”

Grace leans over and kisses her goodnight. Goodnight and thank you. Goodnight because it has been a good night, maybe the best of her life; thank you because Lizzie could have said something else. For a second there, Grace was as defenseless as a sparrow in a storm. Lizzie could have said something as simple as _why._

_Why?_

_It’s dangerous, Lizzie._

_You know, Grace, before I got this secure job at the local crime syndicate, I was a prostitute._

_I vaguely recall Polly bringing it up once. Or twice._

_Or every week. I’ve seen some things, Grace._

_I know._

Maybe Lizzie would have another cigarette before she tried again. Maybe she would strike while Grace was still down. _Is this another duty & honor thing? _

_Something like that._

_If it was, I’d be all right with that._

_It is._

_So I’m all right with it._

_You don’t know what it is. You don’t know how bad it is._

_What, did you kill someone?_

Grace shakes her head. The fake Lizzie in her head is far more direct, far more brutal than the one lying by her side. The Lizzie here, with her hair fanned across the pillow, eyes tracing the tree shadows moving gently along the far wall, wouldn’t demand these things of her. That’s how they are; they’ve demanded nothing from each other and given everything, for reasons Grace still doesn’t understand. It’s tempting to call that love, but she probably wouldn’t know love if it came up to her in the street and shot her in the chest.

 _Fuck,_ says the Lizzie in her head. _You did kill someone._

_Had to._

_For King and Country?_

_No, I was sloppy. I got caught._

_Got caught how?_

_You know how men are._

_Yeah._

_It was work, and I got caught. He took a bullet, and I walked away._

Fake Lizzie starts and stutters, freezes there, because there’s nothing she can do next. Doesn’t make sense for Lizzie to say, _good,_ and kiss Grace’s wrist. That would be nice, but it doesn't make sense, because trust doesn’t stretch that far, even with them, and despite the way they’re both up to their necks in crime, Lizzie still cares about the damage the Shelbys do, categorizes harm in ways that are the closest thing to good as anything Grace has ever seen. What makes sense, though, is nothing that Grace wants to contemplate.

 

 

“You okay?” Lizzie says. She’s been watching Grace for who knows how long, and Grace is grateful that her face always defaults to a grave kind of distance when she’s thinking.

There’s only so many times she can lie to Lizzie in one day, so she answers with a kiss. Hands in Lizzie’s hair, taste of cigarettes on both their tongues, skin on skin in a way that can only be true.


End file.
